Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation

During the past year, Virginia\u27s federal courts published surprisingly few antitrust opinions. These few opinions indicate fact-specific analysis and little significant development to the law. However, the decisions reflect the continued difficulties faced by private antitrust plaintiffs alleging conspiracy claims and criminal antitrust defendants prosecuted for conduct which is illegal per se. Antitrust plaintiffs, however, have enjoyed measured, if only temporary, success. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a grant of summary judgment against a durable medical equipment company alleging monopolization claims against a hospital and its affiliated medical equipment company. In another antitrust case, a district court accepted the arguments of a steel fabricator alleging monopolization and price discrimination by a major steel manufacturer, finding that factual issues precluded a grant of summary judgment. While these decisions prove beneficial to private antitrust plaintiffs, they have been tempered by decisions of the United States Supreme Court broadening application of the Noerr-Pennington antitrust immunity doctrines and requiring inquiry in all instances into defendants market power in attempted monopolization cases

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation

Once again this past year, the Fourth Circuit and the federal courts in Virginia proved inhospitable to antitrust plaintiffs. Plaintiffs consistently lost on summary judgment and only one plaintiff survived a motion to dismiss. The only major development in the law in the Fourth Circuit came from the Western District of Virginia where Judge James C. Turk refused to recognize the theory of monopoly leveraging under Section 2 of the Sherman Act

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation

Group boycott and antitrust conspiracy claims met with little success in Virginia this year. Both federal and state courts are increasingly wary of allowing cases to proceed where the essential elements of antitrust claims are not established or where no impact on competition is proven. Moreover, procedural and evidentiary difficulties have plagued antitrust plaintiffs this year. In short, the cases reflect judicial analysis that is both sophisticated and resistant to allowing meritless antitrust claims to get to a jury

Direct observation of impurity-induced magnetism in an S = 1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg 2-leg spin ladder

Nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetization measurements were used to probe the magnetic features of single-crystalline Bi(Cu(1-x)Znx)2PO6 with 0<x<0.05 at temperatures between 2.6 K and 300 K. The simple lineshape of the 31P NMR signals of the pristine compound changes considerably for x>0 and we present clear evidence for a temperature dependent variation of the local magnetization close to the Zn sites. The generic nature of this observation is indicated by results of model calculations on appropriate spin systems of limited size employing QMC methods.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Impact of strong disorder on the static magnetic properties of the spin-chain compound BaCu2SiGeO7

The disordered quasi-1D magnet BaCu2SiGeO7 is considered as one of the best physical realizations of the random Heisenberg chain model, which features an irregular distribution of the exchange parameters and whose ground state is predicted to be the scarcely investigated random-singlet state (RSS). Based on extensive 29Si NMR and magnetization studies of BaCu2SiGeO7, combined with numerical Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we obtain remarkable quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions of the random Heisenberg chain model and strong indications for the formation of a random-singlet state at low temperatures in this compound. As a local probe, NMR is a well-adapted technique for studying the magnetism of disordered systems. In this case it also reveals an additional local transverse staggered field (LTSF), which affects the low-temperature properties of the RSS. The proposed model Hamiltonian satisfactorily accounts for the temperature dependence of the NMR line shapes.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation Law

Consistent with the recent national trend, antitrust claims in Virginia met with little success in Virginia\u27s courts over the past two years. Not only have the number of antitrust complaints dwindled, but those that are filed are routinely dismissed on the pleadings or by means of summary judgment after discovery. Recent antitrust conspiracy actions have failed for a variety of fundamental reasons, including a lack of standing to bring the action and a lack of a multiplicity of actors capable of engaging in a conspiracy. On the whole, monopolization claims fared no better, and have been dismissed largely because of the absence of any evidence of adverse impact on competition. This article addresses federal and state legislative development and enforcement activities, and antitrust decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and state and federal courts of Virginia for the past two years